36
They sat and sat, with pen behind the ear
Behind a heap of ledgers, frowned, reflected.
And how one storms and vents one’s rage; oh dear!
Should some audacious cit distract one’s labour.
Then sometimes in frock coat, white belt and sabre
One goes, one’s back quite into horse-shoes bent,
Oneself at one’s head office to present.
Here barristers and lawyers lived in clover,
These gave a crafty glance at one another,
Exchanging briefs and actions ten times over—
These being comic rolls,—my learned brother
Adjourns the sitting—terms were kept and cases
For jurisdiction summary, protracted
A year: o’er long bills clients pulled long faces,
For fees on palm leaves to a mite exacted.
Who pass in medicine their examinations
Put on a look of wisdom far superior,
With pins on parrots test innoculations,
With opera glasses, too, “work out” bacteria;
Pulses they feel from morn to dewy even,
The inward functions note, with ear to chest,
And then prescribe; would ours did so, by Heaven!
Their patients, green-room bon-bons of the best.
And there were crowds, too, of Proffesor gibbons
With gold-rimmed spectacles upon their noses;
From head to foot dry pedants in shrunk hoses,
You’d scarce distinguish ’em from Europe’s glib ’uns.
These buzzed round books, as filings round a magnet,
They fished them from the shipwreck with a bagnet,
Tugged many a book to bits, brought scissors, glue, an’
Hi! presto! from the old comes out a new ’un.
But hark! the shrilly professional wail:
